Fed up with her dead end job at a call center, and with dreams of being a star one day, Holly applied for a new reality TV show. She couldn’t know it was to catapult her into fame and make her one of the most recognizable faces on British TV. Fame and fortune, though, came at a price—the road from the call center to the celebrity circuit has been far from smooth. For the first time, Holly is lifting the lid on the perks and perils she’s faced ever since her topless hot tub antics shocked the nation. Holly owes her success to a very simple change of look, which involved both a new bottle of red hair dye and a newfound confidence. Ever since then, audiences have been in stitches as they watch Holly (and her flame-red hair) flirt her way around Newcastle’s famed "Diamond Strip," and places further afield, such as Magaluf, Cancun, and Australia. In this action-packed, revealing, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking memoir, Holly recounts her life in and out of the limelight with brutal honesty—from her childhood days when she was badly bullied, her shocking take on sex and dating, her liaison with bad-boy musician Frankie Cocozza, and what really goes on behind-the-scenes on the UK’s biggest reality TV show. Filled with genuinely touching stories and inside accounts of what they don’t show you on TV, Holly has laid herself bare, first physically and now emotionally. If you think you know all there is to know about Holly from Geordie Shore, think again.

    Talking candidly about his entire career; his acting, writing and directing, and the many tussles he has faced with Hollywood moguls, this is Bruce Robinson as you've never seen or heard him before.'The most purely likeable book about cinema I have ever read. Robinson talks about his profession in a way that is astonishingly clear-headed, funny and wise' David Hare, Guardian, Books of the Year

    His uniquely stylish films, with their designer violence, exuberant black humour and rapid-fire, tough-guy dialogue, have won him worldwide critical acclaim and rock star status. Tarantino is walking, talking, Oscar-winning proof that you can break the rules and still triumph over Hollywood. This roller coaster ride through Quentin Tarantino's life and work is based on over 100 in-depth interviews with friends, colleagues and family and was written with the invaluable support of Quentin's mother, Connie. Perceptive and compelling, Quentin Tarantino: Shooting From The Hip penetrates the eccentric world of Hollywood's hottest movie director. It is essential reading for everyone wanting to understand Tarantino the man, and the phenomenon.

    Since all journalists and writers were barred from the shooting of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, actor Bob Balaban's diary is a rare on-the-spot account of the making of Steven Spielberg's classic sci-fi film.

    This is the story of his life: the ups, the downs, from finding fame to losing his father, and his love-affair with music. Raised in Lancashire, as the youngest of nine children with a father who played opera at home, Alfie's story is not typical of opera stars. His dreams of singing were only ever going to be dreams until fate intervened in the form of a stranger: he was training as a car mechanic when a customer overheard him and told him about a London audition which Alfie needed to try out for. He got the part and never looked back. This is the story of how Alfie went from car mechanic to this generation's most popular and well-known opera star. How he became celebrated by Baz Luhrman, Cameron Macintosh and Michael Parkinson as the best tenor we've produced in a generation. This is also the story of snobbery from within the establishment and how Alfie has created serious upset with some of the more traditionally inclined members of the opera scene. It's a story which his legions of fans will love.

    

    During the past three years he has gone from lover to carer, and he has found his new job exceptionally tough. In this moving and bitterly honest account, the newsreader reveals his loneliness and his despair. For John, it was love at first sight. For many years he had admired Bonnie from afar, hoping and dreaming one day she would feel the same way. Nearly a decade after they first met, their passionate and romantic love affair began. They married in 1985—head over heels in love—and have enjoyed more than 20 years of love and laughter. Both had been married before (she had two children and he had three) but both felt, the day they married, they finally joined their other half. In March 2004, John began to notice strange quirks in Bonnie's behavior. She underwent her first set of neurological tests in March 2005, which brought back no definite results. Then, in February 2006, following a second set of tests, she was diagnosed with Dementia. For three years John personally cared for his beloved wife, keeping her condition secret from all but family and close friends. But in the middle of September this year, more than 26 years after his life with Bonnie began, John made the agonizing decision to move his wife to a full-time care home. Written in passionate and vivid prose that captures both the warmth of the good times and the utter despair of the bad times, John weaves together a series of moving and heartfelt stories. In this combination of present day descriptions of life with Bonnie as her carer and memories of the romantic years they shared together, John gives a unique—and at times stark—insight into the pain of witnessing a loved one lose their memory. This is a story of pain and despair, of anger and guilt. But above all, it is a story of love; a story of devotion, dedication, and the pleasure that those little moments of recognition, those glimmers of joy, can give—even in the hardest times.

    Now, for the first time, this EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner shares his story in his own words. “I hope fans of comedy will get a kick out of the stories behind my work, and really enjoy taking this remarkable ride with me.”—Mel Brooks For anyone who loves American comedy, the long wait is over. Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny.All About Me! charts Mel Brooks’s meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Whether serving in the United States Army in World War II, or during his burgeoning career as a teenage comedian in the Catskills, Mel was always mining his experiences for material, always looking for the perfect joke. His iconic career began with Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, where he was part of the greatest writers’ room in history, which included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. After co-creating both the mega-hit 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums and the classic television series Get Smart, Brooks’s stellar film career took off. He would go on to write, direct, and star in The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs, as well as produce groundbreaking and eclectic films, including The Elephant Man, The Fly, and My Favorite Year. Brooks then went on to conquer Broadway with his record-breaking, Tony-winning musical, The Producers. All About Me! offers fans insight into the inspiration behind the ideas for his outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work, and offers details about the many close friendships and collaborations Brooks had, including those with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft. Filled with tales of struggle, achievement, and camaraderie (and dozens of photographs), readers will gain a more personal and deeper understanding of the incredible body of work behind one of the most accomplished and beloved entertainers in history.

    Do you know of a Vietnam veteran struggling with his Faith after witnessing the horrors of war? Do you have a son or nephew serving in the military and facing an uncertain future in a troubled world? Here is a book to help them see how a Christian man lives and dies in service to God and country.

    Yet five years later, Cheryl, Kimberley, Nadine, Nicola, and Sarah have come a long way indeed. With a record-breaking 16 consecutive Top 10 singles (including three number ones), four platinum albums, and record sales in excess of 4.2 million in the UK alone, they are loved by the masses, critically aacclaimed by the broadsheets, and have been nominated for a Brit. Now the girls have seized the opportunity to share the story of their success. Giving a personal insight into their childhoods, their love interests, their struggle for recognition, their party lifestyle, and their rock solid friendships with each other, this book charts the girls' ride from relative obscurity to international superstardom, with plenty of style advice and celebrity gossip along the way. Fun, fiesty, drop-dead gorgeous, immensely successful, and the life and soul of the party, Girls Aloud have literally millions of adoring fans in the UK. Packed full of never-before-seen pics and lavishly illustrated throughout, this book is a must-read for them all.

    This book describes the 1994-5 season at Charlton Athletic but it could be any in which he reveals the ups and downs of what it is like to be an ordinary professional player.There are the injuries, the battles for selection, and the worries that age is catching up on him, which would mean the end of his career. But there are also the occasional triumphs, such as when he was appointed captain and scored the winning goal in a televised match.Written with wit, intelligence and insight, Left Foot Forward reveals far more about what it is really like to be a footballer than any number of ghosted autobiographies by the big stars. It is destined to become a classic of football writing.

    Though the odds were against her, she became one of the few female fighter pilots in the Navy. In 1994, after serving her country honorably for eight years, Tammie Jo left the Navy and joined Southwest Airlines in the early 1990’s. On April 17, 2018, Tammie Jo was called to service once again. Twenty minutes into a routine domestic flight, Captain Shults was faced with the unthinkable—a catastrophic engine failure in the Boeing 737 caused an explosion that punctured hydraulic lines and severed fuel lines, tearing away sections of the plane, puncturing a window, and taking a woman’s life. Captain Shults and her first officer, Darren Ellisor, struggled to stabilize the aircraft.Drawing deeply from her well of experience, Tammie Jo was able to wrestle the severely damaged 737 safely to the ground. Not originally scheduled for that flight, there is no doubt God had prepared her and placed her right where she needed to be that day.

    

    As Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz Judy Garland had charmed the world, singing and dancing down a golden path to fame; now she was middle-aged and wracked with personal problems, habitually late for rehearsals, often not showing up at all. When she made what proved to be her final appearance on Stage 43 in Television City (dressed, rather ironically, as a clown), one stagehand, assessing her thin and haggard figure, sighed no more yellow-brick road. In The Other Side of the Rainbow--now reissued with a new preface--Mel Torme takes us on a Hollywood roller-coaster ride through the triumphs and disasters of this short-lived show, at the same time revealing a personal side of Judy Garland rarely glimpsed. While she was notoriously hard to work with, and her affection for the Blue Lady (Blue Nun leibfraumilch), vodka, and pills was well-known even at this time, Torme shows that Judy was still capable of breathtaking performances, that she could still earn the sobriquet High Priestess of the entertainment world. Torme signed on to The Judy Garland Show as its musical director, writing special tunes, putting together medleys, at times even coaching Judy from an off-camera position. He was there from the start, survived an almost total purge of show staff, and left just before the final telecast. Consequently, we see it all from center stage: Mickey Rooney saving a virtually unrehearsed early show from failure, Lena Horne storming over Judy's lack of professionalism, Cary Grant refusing to do his oft-imitated JU-dy, JU-dy, JU-dy (insisting he had never said it), daughter Liza Minelli singing a duet with her beaming mother, and Judy herself, alone on the set, belting out a powerfully moving rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic only weeks after the assassination of JFK. (Her desire to do a special program dedicated to Kennedy's memory was nixed by CBS: this was her unexpected and defiant response.) Behind the scenes we witness Judy at her best (Torme remembers of feeling chills of delight as Garland sang Mama's Gone, Goodbye during their first session together), her funniest (telling dirty stories to the production crew), and her worst, drunk and hysterical, waking her colleagues with early morning telephone calls. Known as The Dawn Patrol, Torme and others would leave their beds and rush to Garland's Brentwood home to offer whatever assistance they could. Brimming with anecdotes, illustrated with rare photographs of Judy on the television stage, and informed by the insights of a fellow performer who saw it all, The Other Side of the Rainbow offers a rare and compassionate look at one of America's most beloved and misunderstood entertainment icons.

    He shares poignant stories of his childhood, including one about rolling pennies by candlelight because the electricity had once again been cut off, and his little sister needed medication. At one point, his alcoholic parents abandoned him and his two siblings for five days, with no food, heat, or electricity in the middle of winter.But as Doug grew, his determination to survive grew with him. Despite being accepted to the Air Force Academy directly after high school, he stayed closer to home so he could look after his younger sister. And as various opportunities opened up to him, he discovered that his heart belonged in the political arena; for it was there, he believed, that he could work for real change and bring help to those who suffered as he did as a child.Rolling Pennies in the Dark reminds readers that it is possible to grow up in the most deplorable of conditions and still find success. More significantly, MacKinnon offers real solutions to our nation’s growing poverty problem. This is an important, essential book.